By MARK LORENZANA

Members of the Va Por México coalition, which consists of the centralist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the conservative National Action Party (PAN) and the left-leaning Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), reaffirmed their alliance on Tuesday, Aug. 30, and are set to agree on fielding their chosen candidates in the upcoming 2023 local public elections and the 2024 Mexican general elections.

National and parliamentary leaders of the Va Por México alliance on Tuesday, in their respective speeches at the Legislative Palace of San Lázaro, criticized the “polarization” coming from Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s (AMLO) leftist National Regeneration Movement (Morena), and zeroed in on Morena’s “failed policies,” “corruption” and “ineptitude.”

PAN members Marko Cortés and Jorge Romero, the PRI’s Alejandro Moreno and Rubén Moreira and the PRD’s Jesús Zambrano and Luis Espinosa said that “the unity of the Va por México coalition is firm and solid.”

While they admitted that the three political parties have yet to agree on the candidates that the coalition will field in the local elections in the State of Mexico (Edoméx) and in Coahuila in 2023, and for the 2024 Mexican general elections, they said that they will continue working. “We have already seen and demonstrated that together we can beat Morena,” said Cortés.

The leaders of the three political parties also announced that they will work “on fundamental issues for Mexicans, such as security, the economy, health, education, as well as the defense of democracy and its institutions.”

Moreira likewise dismissed statements from journalists that they are “an opposition without force.”

“A good opposition is one that does not allow, and will not allow, the rights of Mexicans to be trampled,” he said. “Constitutional reforms have to be examined in detail, and we will continue to oppose those that limit rights and restrict freedoms.”

Moreira said he believes that “polarization does not benefit the country, so we will not fall into the trap of pitting one against another.”